Though the International Brigades provided very little military training, many volunteers brought their own experience. Kevin Levangie digs into the military backgrounds of Canadian volunteers, telling which wars they fought on, which sides they ended up on, and how their politics came up against their militarism.

In Part 2 of our interview with Tyler Wentzell, we talk about a whole lot of things: his research on Toronto's Standard Theatre, the Foreign Enlistment Act, canada and the Spanish Civil War from the persepctive of a military historian, and anti-fascism.

Part 1 of our interview with Tyler Wentzell, military historian and legal scholar. Wentzell talks about Ed Cecil-Smith, a Canadian volunteer, commanding officer in the International Brigades, and significant member of the Communist Party in Canada. He is also the subject of Wentzell's forthcoming book.

Kaarina and Kevin talk about the kinds of camps that Canadian Spanish Civil War volunteers might have moved through: Canada's relief camps, International Brigades' disciplinary camps, Fascist Prisoner of War camps, and French refugee camps, and German concentration camps.

Canada and the Spanish Civil War co-director Emily Robins Sharpe talks about Jewish North American and African American participation in the Spanish Civil War, and the war's impact on Jewish North American and African American literature

Kevin Levangie traces the typical (if such a generalization is possible) journey and experience of a Canadian volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He discusses the Canadian's resistance to discipline, how scarcity of resources affected volunteers, and the battles they engaged in.

Kevin Levangie tells us about a Canadian volunteer named Tomo Čačić, and his complicated journey to the Spanish Civil War and beyond. We talk about deportation, forced mobility, anti-communism, and nation-building.

Kaarina chats with Hugh Goldring of Ad Astra Comix about Anarchism leading up to the Spanish Civil War, during the war, and in Canada and North America today. Hugh also shares his thoughts on anti-fascism today.

Andrea Hasenbank joins us to talk about pamphlet culture radical movements throughout the 1930s, and traces a pretty compelling trajectory from Canadian leftist parties and organizations, through the Second World War and the building of the social welfare state and into our present (more dire) times. She reminds us how hard we have to fight for an equitable and democratic society, and how capitalism and austerity operate to undo and erase that work.

Kevin Levangie joins host Kaarina Mikalson to talk about Doctor Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who ran a blood transfusion service in Spain. Kevin tells us about Bethune's background, his radical politics, his art, and his work in Spain and China.

Kevin Levangie joins Kaarina Mikalson to discuss the Canadians who fought in the Spanish Civil War and the organizations they fought with: the International Brigades and the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion.

In this episode, Kaarina Mikalson introduces the podcast, the project behind it, and provides a brief historical overview of the Spanish Civil War. Stay tuned for the next episode, about the International Brigades and the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.